Microsoft announces pricing for Windows Azure

Can’t wait to use Microsoft’s upcoming cloud operating system, Windows Azure, but you’re antsy about the price? Don’t worry – Microsoft clearly laid out its business model this morning at the Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.

Computing: 12 cents per hour

Storage: 15 cents per gigabyte

Storage transactions: 10 cents per 10,000

Bandwidth: 10 cents in, 15 cents out per gig

Got it? No?

Well, just know this: It’s a pay-as-you-go pricing model, so you won’t pay for anything you don’t do in Windows Azure.

Figure you use Windows Azure five hours a day – that’s $18 to Microsoft for a month. Let’s say you use 80 gigabytes of bandwidth in the month (the usage cap for Comcast customers is 250 gigs). That’s $10, averaging the in and out bandwidth to 12.5 cents. And, for the sake of fewer annoying numbers, let’s ignore storage.

So, $28 for a month of using Windows Azure, the cloud operating system that lets people use Web-hosted applications and store data on Microsoft’s servers.

Not bad? Maybe, maybe not. But the pricing is right in line with similar products already offered by Google and Amazon.